Apocalypse of Jude

Chilled beats mix an ocean calm between all in Paul’s house as its partygoers waft from living room to kitchen to veranda, fixing drinks, lighting cigarettes, lounging in chairs and gazing out on a view whose beauty dulls the mind with a subtle sense of salvation. Audrey gets up from one of the two foam-picked orange couches that face each other, and goes to the large window overlooking the overgrown garden. But she is more interested for the moment in the reflection of Paul and Janice on one couch, and this man Gary that seeks her, now alone on the other.

When returning to this town four months ago, she had expected to receive the pariah status that any person who had been forced out was met with. Five years earlier, her parents had been ostracised and forced to leave. It had served them right. They had supported the old exclusionary law which prevented the sale of property in the town to anyone who so wished to buy it. The town had turned on them and exiled them. But her own need to come to terms with this town and its faith was overwhelming, and so she returned. Yet after returning, instead of finding enmity towards her, Paul had contacted her. Said he liked her credentials, could arrange a job for her and had a place for her to stay; said he thought hard feelings towards her because of her parents was ridiculous, and wanted to clear her name before the town.

The euphoria had swept over her and before she knew it, she was working as a secretary with Janice’s sister for one of the town’s top lawyers and had moved in with Janice, who seemed to be Paul’s girlfriend, though she seemed to sleep with whomever she liked. Yet Paul seemed happy with it. The other day, Janice had told her that Gary—son of Rupert Stetson no less—was interested in her. So last night they had all gone out…and the honeymoon ended. Seeing that flower girl and her obvious hold over Gary at the club had put in her heart an incessant, banging, jealous desire to take Gary from her. But it had also shocked her eyes open, and for the first time she felt an uneasy dark music drifting out of Paul that was intoxicating all around him. Right now, that same uneasy darkness seemed to be tugging at her to let go into this lazy, lounging atmosphere.

Realising its sway over her, she changes the focus of her eyes to look across the bay to where the water lies still as a lake, like the Starnbergersee she had once seen, and where the late afternoon sky is beginning to ready its palate of colours for the evening. She sees Caul broodily sitting alone on the terrace wall, legs hanging free, looking out over the scene. Wanting to be more sure of this house’s nature before committing to her jealous desire, she goes out to him.

“You’ve got a strange name.”

Caul takes a moment to connect with Audrey who joins him on the terrace wall, sitting with her back to the view.

“I was born with one on my head.”

“With what on your head?”

“A caul.”

“What’s that?”

He looks at her, maybe with slight disdain. “That I’m going to leave to your curiosity.”

She makes no response, but lifts her shoulders and then drops them as she continues to try gauge this new environment. She casts her eyes to some unpruned rose bushes with the signs of spring budding in them.

“Those roses must be beautiful in summer.”

Caul looks sullenly over.

“They are. They’re those big unkempt pink ones that just spread it all out for you to dig your nose into and smell. But they’re quite diseased and we only really get a few.”

“They need pruning and care, that’s why. Then you’d get more roses to stick your nose into.”

Audrey witnesses a look of sad hope as Caul turns back to her.

“I don’t know. A few healthy roses among the sick. It kind of gives me hope that health exists despite sickness.”

She squints at him closely for explanation.

“You grew up in this town right?”

She nods.

“It’s going to be beautiful in summer wouldn’t you say?”

He laughs as if it pains him to see her realise the intention of his question.

“Well, this town is like those rose bushes. Sick and diseased. And this house is the reason for that disease. We’ve been spreading it around, creeping into people’s souls to line them with the mildew of rot, waiting for that one day when they’ll wake up and realise that the beauty that is their life is missing. Then we would come to heal them and take this town from those who stole it from us.”

A scowl of anger darkens Caul’s countenance, infecting his voice with cut bitterness.

“But the reality is that the ones who are dead are us, and we’re feeding them our death. Now they are patiently dying our death, and there is no way out except to hope that this summer will surprise us and throw up a few healthy roses.”

Audrey’s clean blue eyes try to find a fix on Caul’s mixed, angered, green ones. He suddenly laughs apologetically, as if realising what he’s just said.

“Well, you’re caught in our death now. But my wish is that you’ll leave now and that I won’t see you again.”

Caul swings his legs back over the wall and heaves himself from it, stalking into the house, melting into its gloom. Gary comes out from the lounge. He lays his hand on her right shoulder, but with her hand she pushes it off.

“What’s wrong?”

“Can you take me home Gary?”

“Why? It’s just getting nice and lazy now.”

“I just don’t want to be here anymore. Caul just proved what you said about this place last night.”

“What did I say?”

“That it’s crazy.”

“I meant like it’s alive you know, compared to that.”

His arm gestures disparagingly to the lights of the town below covered now in hazy dusk, but his words serve only to wring a heightened sense of alarm from her.

“Then right now I don’t want to be alive. Can you please just take me home.”

She doesn’t wait for him to agree, but lifts herself from the wall, shoulders her bag and goes out to wait for him beside his car, wondering how she found herself here. As if in answer, out of her soul rises the image of Pygmalion perfection that she saw last night. She remembers Gary’s anger and the way he dismissed that cockney striptease. The angry pleasure that the memory gives her grips her heart, and it is intent on smothering her fears of this place.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 9